The present invention relates to an illuminator used in a portable electronic apparatus or the like such as a portable telephone, a pocket bell or the like, and particularly relates to an illuminator in which a liquid crystal display for displaying characters, symbols, etc. is illuminated by use of light-emitting element bodies in each of which a plurality of light-emitting elements different in wave length are formed integrally.
Besides background-art portable telephones in which a display portion includes a ringer device for sending out a ringing sound from a sounding body such as a speaker, an piezoelectric buzzer or the like so as to give information, JP-A-5-136728 discloses a portable telephone in which light sources having at least two kinds of light source colors for illuminating a display are changed over sequentially in a cyclic manner so as to give information. Moreover, JP-A-6-204910 discloses means for informing a user only of a change of the color of emitted light so as to give information about the operating conditions of the apparatus.
JP-A-9-203899 discloses an LCD display or the like as a structure for illuminating such a display, the LCD display being incorporated with a light guide plate provided with a curved surface for guiding light from LED elements.
In the structure described above, the display can be illuminated, but there is disclosed no means for illuminating characters or symbols displayed on the display or the vicinities of the characters or symbols uniformly. Accordingly, such a structure could inform the user only of the fact that the light source color had been changed over, or the user could recognize only the fact that the light source color had been changed over. Therefore, there was a problem that the displayed characters, symbols, etc. could not be read clearly.
Particularly in a display of a portable telephone which has a function of displaying a phone number of a caller, etc. when there is a call, characters cannot be read correctly if illumination light has light and shade in a displayed area. Accordingly, there was a case where the color shading of the illumination light obstructs user's reading of characters, symbols, figures, etc. displayed to be essentially given to and read by a user. Further, there was a case where the portable telephone was degraded if there was a color shading in the display portion also serving as the exterior of the portable telephone.
Although such a color shading can be avoided if light-emitting elements are disposed continuously as measures against the color shading, use of numerous light-emitting elements increases the cost. In addition, for example, the portable telephone is manufactured to have the width of from about 30 to about 50 mm so as to be gripped and operated by one hand, and the display portion is also formed to have the same width as described above.
However, a warp is generated in the case where the light-emitting elements are formed into a single light-emitting element body in order to illuminate the display portion having this width. Parts are generally mounted on a printed board by reflowing through front-mount technique. However, if there is a warp in the parts, a failure in soldering is incurred so that the parts cannot be mounted normally.